DragonBall Z: Burst Limit Impressions

Dragonball Z has been a staple in anime for years. It is only natural that it has also been a staple in gaming. Since the Playstation 1 era there has been fighting games based off of the series. Now one of the companies, Dimps has reclaimed the liscence to make the first good DBZ game since DragonBall Z: Budoaki 3.

The Demo for DragonBall Z: Burst Limit was released onto the PSN on 5/15. The demo consists of two levels. The levels are the first and forth levels, Goku Vs Raditz and Yamcha Vs Saiba Men respectfully. The game has simple controls, rush attack, smash attack, Aura Spark, ki blast, Blow-Away attack, persuit, transform, guard and movement. The controls are pretty simple, but it doesn;t over simplify the combat. Im not too sure how pursuit(all it does is lower your ki) works but transform doesn’t work because this point in the story no one can transform, so like previous games it defaults to a grab if transform is not possible. The Ki system has been reworked and now consist of one bar(making it imnpossible to spam a special attack for more than three times in a row). The more hits you land the more your aura starts to show, its blue but in a super saiyan form it would be yellow and so on for different forms. When the Ki bar is full you can hold down aura spark which will cause a short sceen of your character powering up. Your attacks become more powerful but your ki bar is constantly going down(making it difficult to pull off a special move). When the ki bar depletes you go back tto a normal, non aura sparked form. There is also a blow away attack that when doing a specific amount of damage(using aura spark helps) will hit the person away off the map and initiate a mini game. This game is just a jam session with the face button and works to see if the attacker deals damage of not. The fight will then take the skies. Another blow away attack mays end them flying into the ground.

The Special and ultimate moves system is very simplified. For example for Goku, Pressing -> and O casuses his signiture Kamehameha wave. Pressing the Up Arrow and O while the Ki bar is full will allow him to use his ultimate attack.the Super Kamehameha wave. Another aspect of the gameplay(which can get very annoying) are the dramatic scenes. These scenes take place when something in the battle triggers it. For example in the first one, hitting Raditz with a kamehameha wave, teleporting and hitting Raditz in the back, Goku’s hp reaching a certain point, and things of that nature. In the demo these cannot be skipped, which is why they are annoying. The scenes are interesting and give the game something new. The scenes can change aspects of the fight as well, making a guard against certain techniques, and things of that nature. Maybe it is just the demo but no matter how many times you repeat a fight, the scenes cannot be skipped. There are not a major annoyance. but having the ability to skip them would really be nice.

The graphics are excellently done, really bringing the anime feel of the series to the game. All the original voice actors are used(they must make a killing) so the look and sound of the series is will represented. The game is shaping up extremely well, this is definitely getting at least a B in my book so far. There is also a Ranknig feature for each fight based on the Dramatic scenes and certain objectives(Killing someone with an ultimate attack, winning in a certain amount of time, this of that nautre). I’ve only gotten as low as an A, highest being a Z. It seems battle objectives take priority over scenes when it comes to rankings but i can see perfectionist freaks trying to get everything. As i said before, the game is shaping up very nicely and i will be picking this up giving a full review when it is released on June 10th.